The Black Hat Brigade goes down in history for their Civil War valor

As numerous 150th-anniversary battle re-enactments take place back East, it's clear the Civil War did not end in 1865 — it continues into endless overtime.

For 18 years, I've been a Civil War re-enactor, these days a Yankee first sergeant in the 6th Wisconsin regiment of the Iron Brigade, aka the Black Hat Brigade. Lance Herdegen's new book explains why I and so many others put on a uniform and play old army one weekend a month, and why those brave "boys of '61" should not be forgotten.

There's no better historian to tell their story than Herdegen, former director of Civil War Studies at Carroll University — the oldest college in Wisconsin. He's already written plenty about the Black Hats, and his latest is the crowning achievement of a lifetime of study, "The Iron Brigade in Civil War and Memory: The Black Hats from Bull Run to Appomattox and Thereafter."

In 1861, the South started the Civil War, and four years and more than 600,000 dead Americans later, the North finished it. Among the best finishers for the boys in blue were the Westerners of the Iron Brigade, a name that implied hard times and tough men. The Black Hats of the Army of the Potomac suffered a greater percentage of casualties than any other brigade in the Union army. Without their valor on the first day of Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, we'd all be saying "y'all" about now.

Herdegen is rightly regarded as the greatest living authority on all things Black Hat. Alan Nolan wrote the initial history of the unit, "The Iron Brigade," published in 1961, and the two were pals for almost 50 years, Herdegen recalled in an interview when his book was published last fall.

"I had provided some minor information to him at the time, and we became lifelong friends and walked a lot of the battlefields together," Herdegen said. "It is difficult to grow up in Wisconsin and not be drawn to the story of the Iron Brigade, which included three Wisconsin regiments in addition to one from Michigan and one from Indiana. ... Alan pretty much ended his book after the Iron Brigade lost its all-Western makeup in 1863, and included only a few pages on the rest of the war."

With this current volume, Herdegen has finished the story Nolan began, and having Herdegen write about his beloved Black Hats is like having Bart Starr tell Green Bay Packers stories.

"I think it is because many of the soldiers were just regular folks from my home state who played such a key role in the Civil War," Herdegen said. "I can drive past their old farms and homesteads and through their hometowns on the same roads they traveled. I can stand at their gravesides."

The map of the United States was different in 1861 — there were only 33 states, and the Iron Brigade states were all considered Western states then. These woodsmen and farmers were not like at all like the New England Yankees. They were outsiders, and would (and did) do anything to protect their Western heritage. The Westerners also looked different. They had been issued the M1858 dress hat worn by the regular army — a big black hat — while the vast majority of the Yankee soldiers wore kepis.

The Black Hats fought in all those famous and terrible battles in the East from the summer of 1862 to the end of the war. They were in four costly battles in just three weeks: Gainesville, Second Bull Run, South Mountain (where they earned their name) and Antietam.

The Iron Brigade are rightly remembered for their fight at Gettysburg on the first day, July 1, 1863, and Herdegen's description is worth the price of the book. The Black Hats, badly outnumbered, held off half of Lee's army before they were driven through the town, losing two-thirds of their number. The 6th Wisconsin saved the entire Yankee army — including their Black Hat brothers — with an impetuous charge on an unfinished railroad cut. Without all that Black Hat blood and valor, the North could very well have lost at Gettysburg, and shortly thereafter, the war itself. But the war did not end at Gettysburg — it went on for a year and nine months more.

"All of the attention has been the early part of the war, and especially their stand at Gettysburg," Herdegen said. "How the survivors reacted and performed in the 1864 and early 1865 fighting is a completely different story of a different kind of courage."

Herdegen, who had access to material that has come to light in the last 50 years, including newspapers, letters and diaries, plus scores of never-before-seen pictures, finishes the Black Hat story. So it's not just a battle book — it's also a people book.

About once a month, my friends and I dress up like long-gone Black Hats. Everything looks and sounds like the real thing, except we do not die. Herdegen's book reminds us why we continue to honor these long-dead heroes who did such extraordinary things for $13 a month. They deserve to be remembered. On to Gettysburg 150.